When butter does refuse to come,
And love proves cross and humoursome;
To him with questions, and with urine,
They for discov'ry flock, or curing.
Quoth Hudibras, This Sidrophel
I've heard of, and should like it well,
If thou canst prove the Saints have freedom
To go to sorc'rers when they need 'em.
Says Ralpho, There's no doubt of that;
Those principles I quoted late
Prove that the godly may allege
For any thing their privilege,
And to the dev'l himself may go,,
If they have motives thereunto:
For as there is a war between
The dev'l and them, it is no sin,
If they by subtle stratagem
Make use of him, as he does them,
Has not this present Parl'ament
A ledger to the dev'l sent,
Fully empowr'd to treat about
Finding revolted witches out?
And has not he, within a year,...
Hang'd threescore of 'em in one shire?
Some only for not being drown'd,
And some for sitting above ground,
Whole days and nights, upon their breeches,
And feeling pain, were hang'd for witches;
And some for putting knavish tricks
Upon green geese and turkey-chicks,
Or pigs that suddenly deceast
Of griefs unnat❜ral, as he guest;
Who after prov'd himself a witch,
And made a rod for his own breech.
Did not the dev'l appear to Martin
Luther in Germany, for certain?
And would have gull'd him with a trick,
But Mart. was too politic."
Did he not help the Dutch to purge,
At Antwerp, their cathedral church?
Sing catches to the Saints at Mascon,
And tell them all they came to ask him?
Appear in divers shapes to Kelly,
And speak i' th' Nun of London's belly?
Meet with the Parl'ament's Committee,
At Woodstock, on a pers'nal treaty?
At Sarum take a cavalier,
I' th' Cause's service, prisoner?
As Withers in immortal rhyme
Has register'd to aftertime.
Do not our great Reformers use
This Sidrophel to forebode news;
To write of victories next year,
And castles taken yet i' th' air?
v. 169.] This Withers was a Puritanical officer in the Parliament army, and a great pretender to poetry, as appears from his Poems enumerated by A. Wood.
Of battles fought at sea, and ships
Sunk two years hence, the last eclipse?
A total o'erthrow giv'n the King
In Cornwall, horse and foot, next spring?
And has not he point-blank foretold
Whats'e'er the Close Committee would?
Made Mars and Saturn for the Cause,
The Moon for fundamental laws?
The Ram, the Bull, and Goat, declare
Against the Book of Common-Prayer?
The Scorpion take the Protestation,
And Bear engage for Reformation?
Made all the Royal stars recant,
Compound, and take the Covenant.?
Quoth Hedibras, The case is clear
The Saints may 'mploy a conjurer,
As thou hast prov'd it by their practice;
No argument like matter of fact is:
And we are best of all led to
Men's principles by what they do.
Then let us strait advance in quest
Of this profound gymnosophist,,
And as the Fates and he advise,
Pursue, or wave this enterprise.
This said, he turn'd about his steed,
And eftsoons on th' adventure rid;
Where leave we him and Ralph awhile,
"And to the conj'rer turn our style,
To let our reader understand
What's useful of him beforehand..
He had been long t'wards mathematics,
Optics, philosophy, and statics,
Magic, horoscopy, astrology,
And was old dog at physiology;;
But as a dog that turns the spit
Bestirs himself, and plies his feet
To climb the wheel, but all in vain,
His own weight brings him down again,
And still he's in the self-same place
Where at his setting out he was;
So in the circle of the arts
Did he advance his nat'ral parts,
Till falling back still, for retreat,
He fell to juggle, cant, and cheat:
For as those fowls that live in water-
Are never wet, he did but smatter;'
Whate'er he labour'd to appear,
His understanding still was clear;
Yet none a deeper knowledge boasted,
Since old Hodge Bacon, and Bob Grosted.
v. 224. Roger Bacon, commonly called Friar Bacon, lived in the reign of our Edward I. and for some little skill he had in the mathematics, was by the rabble accounted a conjurer, and had the sottish story of the Brazen Head father'd upon him by the ignorant Monks of those days.
Ib.] Bishop Grosted was Bishop of Lincoln, 20th Henry III, A. D. 1235. "He was suspected by the Volume 11.
Th' intelligible world he knew,
And all men dream on 't to be true,
That in this world there's not a wart
That has not there a counterpart;
Nor can there on the face of ground
An individual beard be found
That has not, in that foreign nation,
A fellow of the self-same fashion;
So cut, so colour'd, and so curl❜ð,
As those are in th' inferior world.
He'd read Dee's prefaces before
The Devil and Euclid, o're and o're;
And all th' intrigues 'twixt him and Kelly,
Lescus and th' Emperor, wou'd tell ye :
But with the moon was more familiar
Than e'er was almanack well-willer;
Her secrets understood so clear,
That some believ'd he had been there;
clergy to be a conjurer; for which crime he was de"prived by Pope Innocent IV. and summoned to appear at Rome." But this is a mistake; for the Pope's antipathy to him was occasioned by his frankly expostulating with him (both personally and by letter) on his encroachment upon the English church and monarchy. He was persecuted by Pope Innocent, but it is not certain that he was deprived, though Bale thinks he was.
V. 235.] Dee was a Welchman, and educated at Oxford, where he commenced Doctor, and afterwards tiavelled into foreign parts in quest of chemistry, &c.
v. 238.7 Albertus Lascus, Lasky, or Alasco, Prince Palatine of Poland, concerned with Dee and Kelly.
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